Saudade
by DarkHairedDreamer
Summary: N. a deep emotional state or profound longing for an absent something or someone; a "missingness" for someone or something that has gone away


The knowledge of the risks had always lingered in the corner of her mind, but she'd grown attached to the thought that she would have him for the rest of her life, that she pushed it so far away that it hardly resurfaced.

Until now.

She'd known - she'd known that this was a possibility.

And in her logical mind, she supposed that she should've been prepared somewhere down the line.

 _(But she couldn't have known that she should've been prepared sooner.)_

The holo-image of Wally had been installed two weeks ago, and she had yet to visit, always stepping one foot into the garden, and then swiftly turning to walk away as fast as she could before her breath started to catch in her throat.

...

The sink used to drip.

All is quiet in their condo as she steps through the front door for the first time in months. The sink no longer drips, and she is quick to notice the eerie silence of their home. The plopof water had been a constant for months, and the couple had gotten used to it after a while.

She'd asked him for weeks to fix it, and he'd always wave it off and tell her he'd get to it. Then she'd tease him about how that meant he never would. He'd always been stubborn and lazy, but she'd loved him for it anyways.

 _(She suddenly realizes that they hadn't had a night back home together since she'd been away.)_

She imagines him alone in the house, Brucely panting and pawing for attention at him, fixing the sink in her absence. She holds onto that image, and wishes that she had stayed by his side, just like he'd hoped she would, and maybe they could've fixed the sink together.

...

The shower water is hot. A little too hot, but she sits down in the tub and doesn't bother to adjust it, because at this point she's numb anyways. She sits in the heat, watching the water drip off the ends of her hair as she gets lost in her thoughts.

Memories of the last five years run through her mind in an instant, flashing like lighting before her eyes. A solemn smile and a tear drops into the water pooling around her, as her heart begins to fully process her loss.

When she snaps out of her haze, she grasps for her towel, but the only towel left on the rack is his. She stares at the Flash insignia she'd found so ironic and feels a burning hole through her heart. He'd bought it in humor, stating that no one would ever suspect a hero to have a towel with their own logo, causing her to shake her head at him in the store. It smells heavily of his shampoo, and tears start to fall once more as she buries her face into the cotton fabric.

...

She sleeps in one of his shirts that night.

She had found his clothes in a haphazard heap on the floor of their room. It looked as if he'd rushed out and left his laundry half done, as piles of colored clothes had begun to be separated from white ones. She picks up a flannel at the top of the pile and slips it on over her pajamas, pulling the shirt tight around her as the scent of his cologne lulls her to sleep, reminding her of the feeling she'd get when laying on his chest.

When she wakes up in the morning, she finds herself curled up with her nose as far into his shirt as she can get it and her fingers clutching at the soft material, shivering from the missing heat that his body usually offered.

The unoccupied space in their bed haunts her, and she feels the tightness in her throat return.

Night after night, she continues to sleep on her side of the bed, as if she would wake up to find him crawling back into bed in the late hours of the morning.

 _(But she knows that won't ever happen again.)_

 _..._

Dick makes a point to visit Artemis every week after the incident.

He knows her better than the facade she's decided to put on and figures it is now his duty to take care of his best friend's girl, who he's inadvertently put through so much.

Instinctively, Artemis knows he's hurting, and part of her knows that he needs her company as much as she needs his, but there's a piece of her that blames him - that blames allof them, and so she could not bring herself to share her grief with one who had helped cause it. Most of his visits were made up of the same shallow conversation, because she had a bad habit of throwing up her walls when she'd been hurt, and any attempt Dick made to probe deeper pushed her further behind that wall. Each day had been a trial, and she knew that he knewher facade would break soon.

So when he stepped into her apartment one Friday afternoon, everything she'd been holding back was let out.

She had yelled and screamed and cried, even gone so far as to slamming her fists on Dick's chest until he was holding her with all the strength and empathy he could muster in his own grieving heart, and she sobbed into him until she felt she had nothing left inside. He tells her she can take a break from the team until she's ready to come back.

When Dick leaves that night, she crawls into Wally's side of the bed for the first time since coming home and finds that she has yet to run out of tears.

...

The solidarity of the living space weighs down on her so heavily that most free time is spent lying in bed, and each day becomes another crack in her strength and a bigger struggle to get out of bed. She's forced to face the ghosts of memories that lurk in every corner of their tiny home, and the silence becomes deafening too soon.

She should've been prepared, she thinks to herself, her thoughts much too loud for her own good. She berates herself for crying, for staring longingly at the picture on their nightstand, for having loved him so hard, so much. Her internal monologue scolds her for the weakness that this has presented within her, but she's found that he'd dug himself deep into the recesses of her heart, and pushing him out would take much longer _(and hurt worse)_ than she would ever know.

...

She notices with chagrin that his presence has begun to fade from their home. His towel, which had long lost the fresh scent of his shampoo, had been washed and neatly folded, packed away into the back of the closet. His clothes had been packed into boxes, washed as well, and ready to be donated, per discussion with his family. The flannel shirt she'd decided to keep of his now held only a faint essence of his cologne, but she still kept it wrapped tightly around her in an attempt to recreate the feeling of his arms around her, holding desperately to any thread she had of him.

She cries less now, but still hurts the same, and has rejoined the team on their nightly missions in order to reinstate some sort of normality. She feels her teammates' eyes watching her closely, waiting for her to shatter as if she is some delicate vase teetering at the edge of a table. Their sympathies only remind her of what she has lost, so she throws herself into being a hero, into the distance - into Tigress - but there is only so far she can swim until the waves of sorrow envelop her once again. She finds herself crying on M'gann's shoulder after a tough mission, breathing through the sobs that she had been hopelessly holding back.

 _(She fears she's suffered a blow that she couldn't recover from.)_

 _..._

She finally decides to visit his family, only having seen them at his memorial service and exchanging tight hugs and tears before deciding she couldn't face them - at least not until now.

She knocks gingerly at the door, and they open almost immediately, as if they had been waiting for her arrival _(which they probably had been)_.

There are tears in his parent's eyes and they rush to hold her as tight as they possibly can, ushering her in and welcoming them into their home. They laugh and recount memories over a hot cup of tea in the living room, before his mother gets up and retrieves something from her room.

She comes back with a small package, addressed to Wally West, and hands it to her. Artemis hesitates with the package, and looks at his parents, who are waiting patiently with a forlorn look across their faces.

She feels her heart swell once more, and she fumbles with the packaging, a bittersweet numbness reaching the tips of her fingers.

When she finally gets it open, a small black box falls out, and she finds herself on the floor of the West's home, weeping in his mother's arms.

...

The greenery of the garden seems so daunting to her.

She's found herself wandering towards the garden, towards his memorial, and she's finally able to muster up the strength to step both feet onto the grass, and towards the red and yellow costumed image.

She makes her way up to his memorial, holding tightly onto the ring that she now wore around her neck as a reminder.

She looks up at the eyes of his image, and the words of everything she'd been feeling - all the things she'd loved of him, all the things they had been together, and all the things they'd now lost - stopped at the tip of her tongue. Her hand trembles as she reaches out to touch the name etched across the bottom of the platform, and a single tear falls.

 _I wish I could have loved you longer._

* * *

WOW. Okay, I have not posted anything in FOUR years, and I am VERY rusty. But with the revival of Young Justice is also the revival of my love for Spitfire, for I have not personally been able to grieve the death of the Wall-man myself #bringbackwally2k19

~DHD


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